lisbon, portugal — Portugal’s center-right Democratic Alliance (AD) won Sunday’s general election by a slim margin and is preparing to govern without an outright majority as the far-right Chega warned of instability if it is not included in government. 

With 99.1% of the vote counted, the AD won 79 seats in the 230-seat legislature, followed by the Socialists with 77 seats, prompting the latter to concede defeat. 

Chega, meaning “enough,” came in third, quadrupling its parliamentary representation to 48 lawmakers after campaigning on a clean governance and anti-immigration platform. 

Chega voters said before the poll that Portugal was in a bad way, and they wanted changes in housing, education, health care and justice in Western Europe’s poorest country. 

AD leader Luis Montenegro told reporters Sunday that he expected President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to formally invite him to form a government. 

Rebelo de Sousa, who will meet with political parties from Tuesday until March 20, told the Expresso newspaper Friday that he would do everything he could to prevent Chega from gaining power. Those remarks drew criticism as the head of state is mandated to remain neutral. 

Chega leader Andre Ventura told reporters the vote clearly showed that the country wants a government of the AD with Chega. 

Ventura said in an interview with the TVI broadcaster that he would vote against the state budget if the AD did not negotiate it with his party. 

“If there is no negotiation, that would be a humiliation for Chega and I would vote against it,” Ventura said. 

The outcome was broadly in line with pre-election opinion polls, but the AD’s victory was significantly smaller and Chega’s growth was larger than predicted, political scientist Andre Azevedo Alves told Reuters. 

Alves, a professor at Lisbon’s Catolica University and St. Mary’s University in London, added that the fragility of an AD government because of its reliance on either the Socialists or Chega to pass legislation made it unlikely to last for several years. 

Javier Rouillet from rating agency DBRS Morningstar warned that if the new government was unable to pass legislation, another round of elections could be held later this year or in early 2025. 

Chega’s surge was boosted by Ventura’s communication skills and widespread dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties, he said, factors that could help it garner even better results in the European Parliament elections. 

“Political disaffection was brewing for a very long time,” said political scientist Pedro Magalhaes, at Lisbon’s Institute of Social Sciences. “But there was no political supply to address this political demand.” 

Marina Costa Lobo, who heads institute, said she believed Montenegro would keep his word and not strike a formal deal with Chega but there might be “piecemeal” agreements between the two going forward. 

“It’s difficult to predict Chega’s behavior because they’re an anti-system party,” she said, adding the far-right’s success in Portugal was a harbinger of what can be expected in the European Parliament election in June. 

Out of the system 

Euro-intelligence consultants said the result marked a new political chapter in Portugal after alternate governance by two mainstream parties for the past 50 years. 

“We don’t know who’ll be in charge of the country. The far right has little or nothing to offer,” doctoral student Jorge Catanheira, 29, told Reuters. 

The election result underscored a political tilt to the far right across Europe and a dwindling of Socialist governance. 

Chega has since 2020 been part of the European Parliament’s Identity & Democracy group, which is expected to see gains in June. 

Spain’s far-right VOX and Matteo Salvini, who leads Italy’s co-ruling party Lega, congratulated Ventura. 

Portugal’s PSI stock index fell 0.3% at open, in line with a decline by European peers, before flattening out. 

“The impact of the elections on the market turned out to be nil,” XTB analysts said in a note. 

Under Socialist leadership since 2015, Portugal has grown at solid annual rates above 2%, except for the pandemic-induced slump of 2020, but many struggle to make ends meet because of low salaries and a housing crisis. 

Voter turnout was 66.23%, the highest in nearly three decades. 

Magalhaes said it was possible turnout reached such levels because voters who had been “out of the system” came back to support the radical right. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden opened his State of the Union address last week with a pledge to continue to support Ukraine, giving Ukrainians hope that a U.S. aid package will be approved. But a foreign aid bill that includes more assistance to Ukraine faces opposition in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives. For VOA, Anna Chernikova reports from Kyiv. VOA footage by Eugene Shynkar.
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A teenage girl from Ukraine, which is dealing with the horrors of a Russian invasion, becomes pen pals with a teenage girl from the U.S. Their correspondence gives insight into two teenagers’ perception of the conflict.
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New Delhi — India has signed a free trade pact with a group of four European nations that aims at drawing in investment of $100 billion over the next 15 years.

The deal announced Sunday with the European Free Trade Association, whose members are Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, comes weeks ahead of India’s national elections in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made economic growth a key poll plank as he seeks a third term in office.

The trade deal is one of several New Delhi is pursuing as it steps up efforts to grow its exports and take advantage of geopolitical shifts that are seeing many Western countries trying to reduce trade dependence on China.

The pact was sealed after about 16 years of negotiations. “The pact is significant because it is India’s first with developed countries,” according to Biswajit Dhar, trade analyst and Distinguished Professor at the Council for Social Development in New Delhi. “So far India, which has many protectionist barriers, only had such agreements with developing countries.”

To ease access to its vast market of 1.4 billion people, India will reduce tariffs on goods ranging from industrial imports to processed foods, beverages and items such as Swiss watches. New Delhi hopes to boost its exports in areas such as information technology and business services.

India is the European Free Trade Association’s fifth-largest trading partner after the European Union, the United States, Britain and China with two-way trade adding up to $18.65 billion in 2022-23.

The investment pledge by the four European countries will create one million jobs, according to Indian Commerce Minister, Piyush Goyal.

“It’s for the first time that we are inking a free trade agreement with a binding commitment to invest $100 billion in India,” Goyal said. “It is a modern trade agreement, fair, equitable and win-win for all five countries.”

European officials said pledging the investment made it a “balanced” deal for both sides. “If you look at the different market sizes, India offers 1.4bn population, plus it’s a door to the global world,” Helene Budliger Artieda, Swiss state secretary for economic affairs, told reporters.

However, trade analyst Dhar said that it remains to be seen how the investment promise translates on the ground. “These four countries had invested just $10 billion in the last 23 years. So taking this up to up to $100 billion in 15 years is a tall order, it does not seem realistic,” he said.

In recent years, India has stepped up efforts to pursue trade agreements to boost its fast-growing economy. In the last two years, it has concluded a free trade pact with the UAE and a preliminary agreement with Australia. Officials are also trying to finalize deals with Britain and Oman.

“This landmark pact underlines our commitment to boosting economic progress and create opportunities for our youth,” Modi said in a post on X after the deal with the European countries was concluded.

Modi is promising to make India, which is a lower middle-income country, a developed nation by 2047.

Bucking the trend of slowing growth in many countries, the Indian economy is growing briskly. It is expected to grow at more than 7% in the financial year that ends in March — the fastest growth among major economies.
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Dublin, Ireland — Irish voters’ rejection of proposals to reword constitutional clauses on family roles and the duties of women has left politicians searching for answers.

Prime Minister Leo Varadkar had presented the vote, conducted on International Women’s Day on Friday and tallied Saturday, as a chance to remove “very old-fashioned, very sexist language about women” from the constitution.

But a proposal to expand the definition of family from a relationship founded on marriage to include other “durable relationships” was rejected by 67.7% of voters, with only 32.3 voting “yes.”

A second referendum on replacing language about a woman’s supposed duties in the home with a clause recognizing the role of family members in the provision of care was rejected by 73.9% of voters.

It was the largest ever referendum defeat in Ireland’s history.

The votes came despite the government, along with most opposition parties, endorsing the proposed changes, and polls forecasting a win for the “Yes-Yes” vote.

What went wrong?

A mix of unclear messaging, a hurried and lackluster “Yes-Yes” campaign and dissatisfaction among “no” voters resulted in an increase in undecided voters leading up to the vote.

Opposition parties gave the proposals only lukewarm support, complaining that the twin questions distorted the suggested wording produced by a Citizen’s Assembly — a nationwide focus group regularly held in Ireland on public issues.

The use of the undefined phrase “durable relationships” in the first referendum was widely criticized as too vague.

The second amendment would have replaced language on “women’s role in the home” with a pledge that the government would “strive” — not be obliged — to support carers in the home.

It failed to mention care outside of the home.

“The government went on a solo run,” said Mary Lou McDonald, leader of the leftist-nationalist Sinn Fein, the largest opposition party which grudgingly backed a “Yes-Yes” vote.

“There is little point in having a Citizens Assembly if the government are then going to ignore the outcome,” she said.

Who voted no and why?

Turnout at less than 50% was lower than in previous referendums, like one on same-sex marriage equality in 2015 and an abortion ban repeal that captured the public attention in 2018.

Only one of 39 constituencies — an affluent area near Dublin — returned a “yes” vote in the family referendum and all 39 voted “no” in the home care referendum.

While “yes” voters failed to turn out in numbers, a disparate coalition of “no” voters angry for different reasons — both progressive and conservative — were energized.   

“When a government doesn’t have all its own side on board and has split its liberal vote, it’s in trouble,” David Quinn, head of the conservative Iona Institute, told AFP.

The care amendment proposal was fiercely criticized by disability rights activists and carers who expressed relief at the result.

“They wanted people and families just to care for people at home, but we need the support of the government too,” Susan Bowles, a 39-year-old care assistant, told AFP in Dublin after the vote. 

An anti-government right-wing protest vote was also a factor, according to analysts. 

“No” campaigners warned against “woke” liberals and “cancelling” the words “women” and “mother” from the constitution.

The result was “a significant victory for the people against the political establishment,” Peadar Toibin, leader of the conservative Aontu, the only parliamentary party to back a No-No vote, told AFP.

Setback for women’s rights?

The ballots had been framed by some on the “Yes-Yes” side as the latest effort to mirror the evolving identity of Ireland, a member of the European Union.

It would also signify the diminishing influence of the once-dominant Catholic Church after the successful 2015 and 2018 referendums.

But holding the referendums on International Women’s Day — reportedly Varadkar’s idea — was a “hammy gesture,” according to Pat Leahy, a journalist with the Irish Times.

“There was an unavoidable sense of people being taken for granted in this,” he said. 

Orla O’Connor, head of the National Women’s Council of Ireland which led the “Yes-Yes” campaign, cautioned against interpreting the result as Ireland voting to keep “life within the home” language for women in the constitution.

“It is more nuanced than that… We will go back and we will fight for those things and continue to fight for equality for families and equality for women,” she told local media.

What is the political fallout?

In the aftermath a visibly shaken Varadkar, who heads up a center-right-green coalition, admitted that the government had received “two wallops” from the public.

With a general election looming within the next 12 months, the defeat poses questions about Varadkar’s and other party leaders’ judgement.

The result “does not mean that general trend of society has lurched permanently to a conservative one,” wrote Leahy. 

“But it definitely means that future governments will not assume that similar constitutional changes are a foregone conclusion,” he said.

Political scientist Eoin O’Malley of Dublin City University called it “a poorly executed referendum that nobody needed or wanted.”

“It was politically designed to secure a liberal legacy for Leo Varadkar, but it makes that legacy look opportunistic,” he told AFP.
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AMSTERDAM — The Netherlands’s National Holocaust Museum is opening on Sunday in a ceremony presided over by the Dutch king as well as Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose presence is prompting protest because of Israel’s deadly offensive against Palestinians in Gaza.

The museum in Amsterdam tells the stories of some of the 102,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands and murdered in Nazi camps, as well as the history of their structural persecution under German World War II occupation before the deportations began.

Three-quarters of Dutch Jews were among the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, the largest proportion of any country in Europe.

Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Herzog will visit a synagogue and open the museum against a backdrop of Israel’s devastating attacks on Gaza that followed the deadly incursions by Hamas in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protests are planned outside the events.

Herzog was among Israeli leaders cited in an order issued in January by the top United Nations court for Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza. He accused the International Court of Justice of misrepresenting his comments in the ruling. Israel strongly rejected allegations leveled by South Africa in the court case that the military campaign in Gaza breaches the Genocide Convention.

“I was disgusted by the way they twisted my words, using very, very partial and fragmented quotes, with the intention of supporting an unfounded legal contention,” Herzog said, days after the ruling.

A pro-Palestinian Dutch organization, The Rights Forum, called Herzog’s presence “a slap in the face of the Palestinians who can only helplessly watch how Israel murders their loved ones and destroys their land.”

In a statement issued ahead of Sunday’s opening, the Jewish Cultural Quarter that runs the museum said it is “profoundly concerned by the war and the consequences this conflict has had, first and foremost for the citizens of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.”

It said that it is “all the more troubling that the National Holocaust Museum is opening while war continues to rage. It makes our mission all the more urgent.”

The museum is housed in a former teacher training college that was used as a covert escape route to help some 600 Jewish children to escape from the clutches of the Nazis.

Exhibits include a prominent photo of a boy walking past bodies in Bergen-Belsen after the liberation of the concentration camp, and mementos of lives lost: a doll, an orange dress made from parachute material and a collection of 10 buttons excavated from the grounds of the Sobibor camp.

The walls of one room are covered with the texts of hundreds of laws discriminating against Jews enacted by the German occupiers of the Netherlands, to show how the Nazi regime, assisted by Dutch civil servants, dehumanized Jews ahead of operations to round them up.
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Brussels — Right-wingers pushing nationalist and Euroskeptic policies are rubbing their hands ahead of EU elections in June.

Voter surveys show growing support for their platforms, which will likely translate into bigger influence over the bloc’s political agenda.

However, a closer look reveals deep splits in the right-wing camp — especially over attitudes toward Russia — that would prevent a united front.

In the European Parliament, far-right forces are settled into two political groups which are mostly rivals and have failed at attempts to join together.

One is the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). The other is the Identity and Democracy group (ID).

“ECR is pro-Ukraine, pro-enlargement, pro-NATO. ID is ambivalent about Russia, anti-Atlanticist, anti-enlargement,” explained Peggy Corlin, analyst at the Robert Schuman Foundation.

ECR counts Brothers of Italy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right party, in its ranks, along with Spain’s Vox, Poland’s populist Law and Justice (PiS), and France’s Reconquete!.

ID is made up of France’s National Rally (RN) whose face is Marine Le Pen, as well as Italy’s League party, Germany’s anti-immigrant AfD, Austria’s FPO and Geert Wilders’ PVV Freedom Party from the Netherlands.

“ECR is more integrated into the EU political game and in the institutional game,” Corlin said. It has two main figureheads: Meloni and Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala.

ID, in contrast, has up to now been treated as something of a political pariah by the other parliamentary groupings.

“The group will take on more importance, to such an extent that I think they can no longer cut us out as they have done since 2019,” predicted one of its EU lawmakers, Jean-Paul Garraud of France’s RN.

Political alliances

However, even within ID there are tensions between those wanting it to appeal more to mainstream voters, as the RN is striving to do, and the likes of AfD — which is suspected of harboring neo-Nazi sympathizers.

Those tensions were laid bare recently when Le Pen publicly distanced herself from the AfD after reports that several of its leaders held a meeting with extremists in which they discussed massively deporting immigrants or Germans of foreign backgrounds.

“We want clarification about what happened, and especially the policies held by the AfD,” Garraud said. “We want to be in agreement with our allies.”

The likely bigger ECR and ID footprints in the parliament could create difficulties for the legislature’s three main groups: the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), from which European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen hails; the leftist Socialists & Democrats (S&D); and the centrist Renew Europe.

The majority decisions those three managed to work out in the past could be upset on certain issues.

The EPP has not ruled out working with ECR — although von der Leyen recently warned she would never cooperate with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “friends” or enemies of “the rule of law.”

That is an allusion to Fidesz, the party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who maintains close ties to the Kremlin and has put obstacles in the path of EU aid for Ukraine. Fidesz is in talks to join ECR.

“Let’s see what that brings,” said Akos Bence Gat, an expert at the think tank MCC Brussels that is backed by Hungary’s government.

“For me, what’s important is for the sovereignist right wing to be able to come together and form effective cooperation,” he said, adding that he saw scope for areas of agreement to defend “a Europe of nations” that upholds “traditional values” and battles “massive immigration.”

Internal rifts

But if Fidesz does join the ECR, that could prompt other parties in the group, such as Finland’s Finns Party, or the Sweden Democrats, “to reconsider their position,” noted Sanna Salo, a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

But, beyond the internecine rifts, “if there is a shift to the right … they can influence the agenda in other ways,” she said, for instance by pushing governments toward their restrictive migration and climate policies.

Already on migration, the EPP seems ready to embrace the far right’s stance: its latest manifesto vows to have asylum-seekers sent to “safe” countries outside the EU.

That echoes what Britain is trying to do under a deal with Rwanda, which has already run afoul of the European Convention on Human Rights, on which EU law in this area is based.
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Nicosia, Cyprus — A U.S. charity said it was loading aid for Gaza onto a boat in Cyprus, the first shipment to the war-ravaged territory along a maritime corridor the EU Commission hopes will open this weekend.

The Spanish-flagged vessel Open Arms docked three weeks ago in the port of Larnaca in Cyprus, the closest European Union country to the Gaza Strip.

“World Central Kitchen teams are in Cyprus loading pallets of humanitarian aid onto a boat headed to northern Gaza,” the charity said Friday in a statement.

“We have been preparing for weeks alongside our trusted NGO partner Open Arms for the opening of a maritime aid corridor that would allow us to scale our efforts in the region,” it added.

The charity said it plans to tow a barge loaded with provisions for the people of Gaza, where dire humanitarian conditions more than five months into the Israel-Hamas war have led some countries to airdrop food and other assistance.

“The endeavor to establish a humanitarian maritime corridor in Gaza is making progress, and our tugboat stands prepared to embark at a moment’s notice, laden with tons of food, water, and vital supplies for Palestinian civilians,” Open Arms said on social media platform X.

In Larnaca, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen had earlier expressed hope that a maritime corridor could open this Sunday, although details remained unclear.

She said a “pilot operation” would be launched on Friday, aided by the United Arab Emirates which secured “the first of many shipments of goods to the people of Gaza.”

There are no functioning ports in Gaza and officials did not say where the initial shipments would go, whether they would be subject to inspection by Israel, or who would distribute aid.

The Pentagon said Friday that a U.S. plan to establish a “temporary offshore maritime pier” in Gaza would take up to 60 days and would likely involve more than 1,000 American personnel.

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in about 1,160 deaths, mostly civilians, Israeli figures show.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has responded with a relentless military offensive that the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said has killed at least 30,878 people, most of them women and children.

Israel, which withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but has maintained control over its airspace and territorial waters, said it “welcomes” the planned maritime corridor.
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